The Kelly Writers House will host a reading on Monday by students of Xfic, Penn’s experimental nonfiction journal.
Creative Writing Program Faculty member Jay Kirk has taught a workshop yearly since 2019 called Advanced Nonfiction Writing: Xfic. In the class, a small group of students spends the semester developing an original long form piece. Every student in the workshop is also an editor for Xfic, critiquing their peers’ writing and leading the artistic and promotional work for the journal.
Attendees of the reading on Dec. 12 will hear the nine students in Kirk’s workshop read excerpts from their pieces.
“One of the things we’re after in Xfic is, how can we put the meaning generation machine on pause and really look at reality?” Kirk said. “How can we be receptive to being completely surprised and finding meanings that might contradict our expectations in the wildest ways?”
Kirk compared the writing process to documentary filmmaking: the goal is to document everything as it happens, then review the footage afterward for elements that can form a final product. One exercise he assigns to his students involves translating moments of their days into words. Rather than taking a photo to capture the moment, students write down their sensations and subjective impressions as they experience them.
“You’re documenting something that is literally unfolding as you are writing about it,” Kirk said. “When you review it later, you’re inevitably going to make discoveries.”
Every semester, a completely new group of students replaces the previous Xfic editors. This change is part of what makes the journal “experimental,” according to Kirk.
“Each group of students takes over the class, and they conduct their own experiment,” Kirk said. “It becomes the personality of the current group.”
Nursing first-year Amara Nwabor decided to enroll in the workshop because she enjoyed creative writing in high school. She spent the semester developing a piece that combines her experience running a startup sunglasses business with her interest in learning how to do eye makeup.
Nwabor said she found the in-class workshop process especially helpful as she wrote her piece. During workshopping, the author stays silent and takes notes while other students discuss the draft and provide feedback.
“It’s a great way to keep people on their toes,” Nwabor said.
College senior Helen Wu worked on a story that evolved significantly over the course of the class. Her original plan was to sit overnight in a 24-hour diner and document the people she met.
A spontaneous conversation with a bartender in a New York City diner led Wu to a deep exploration of restaurant dynamics, from the waitstaff who interact regularly with customers to the cooks, sous chefs, and dishwashers who work behind the scenes. Wu’s classmates helped her refine the story’s structure until the final product, Full House, was published on the Xfic website.
“If you just take your time and are patient with a piece that hasn’t come to fruition yet, the time and energy invested will end up being something good,” Wu said.
Wu added that she persevered with her project and is happy with her results.
“My hope is that they [attendees] will come and see what spectacularly talented writers there are at Penn,” Kirk said. “Be prepared to laugh.”
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